Douglas Goldstein: Aviad Goz has represented Franklin Covey in Israel since 1999 He specializes in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and he has taught the concepts in Israel hundreds of times

Tell me something when you got started teaching the Seven Habits, did you know Stephen Covey? Aviad Goz: No not at all Actually, it all started by me just start seeing the book right after it was translated to Hebrew I was very fascinated by the book in BDS and in the end of the book it said that you can purchase a diary based on the system so I actually sent them, at that time it was a letter trying to purchase the diary but I signed Aviad Goz Momentum Training and so they replied and said “Are you a training company?” I said “Yes” “Are you based in Israel?” I said “Yes” and they asked “Would you mind to present us?” so I said “Yes, it’s great Great ideas, great wisdom

” So it is how it started with me and then I went to study the system, the cause and then I met on student congress a few times Douglas Goldstein: So there are seven habits, which one would you say if someone wants to get started it’s probably the number one place for someone to start to become more effective Aviad Goz: The seven habits are based, really it’s a journey from non-effectiveness to effectiveness and they start with the state of being dependent, moving to a state of being independent and then to higher level of being interdependent But the first habit is called the “Proactive” and it is the first because it’s the very foundation of becoming effective, in a very short version on that sense being proactive means taking responsibility, taking responsibility to initiate things and also taking responsibility for all your responses so whatever comes your way, the idea of proactivity is that a person has the freedom to choose with own responses and they are responsible for their own responses Douglas Goldstein: Many people think there’s nothing I can do about improving my financial situation or the government is going to help me out or it’s not fair and therefore there’s nothing, you know I’m behind the eight ball and because it’s not fair, you know they throw their hands up and never get to improve

How can someone decide to be proactive and then actually do it? Aviad Goz: What you have described just now is called the reactive attitude or the victim attitude to use a stronger word, meaning blaming everyone and everything else for your own situation Now although there might be some things which are right about the circumstance and the government and the fixation, what will you do in the course and what the book does, it shows deeply what happens if this is the attitude you go in life with and it really produces no change so we were concentrating on this idea that whatever happens to you, you can choose your responses and unless you take the responsibility, even if it’s small at first, nothing will change, it will actually get worse So basically it’s a paradigm, we work into trying to shift the paradigm from being a victim to being someone who sits in the driver’s seat of their life and starting even in those small baby steps and to see how it works As an example in the last year or two I work voluntarily with some people not in the usual organizational training particularly small businesses and usually you’ll find them in that state of mind and so I can do anything, it’s the government, it’s the tax, it’s the competition and then you say to them that might be their area of influence Another area of concern which they come out of is the area of influence and actually the idea is pro-activity originally means pro-action or in other words whether the small actions, small steps you can do and prove to yourself that there can be a momentum of moving away from that but can be taking a one-hour extra job once a week or initiating a small activity that we produce some extra income but this is where it starts but at the moment the person’s sense of even in initial success, they can begin to create a momentum

Usually we work with large companies but also within the regions that if they take the proactivity idea and realize that they’re responsible for their destiny and no one else is and then to think what might be the small sort of actions they can do, it goes very far eventually Douglas Goldstein: One of the things that I’ll talk to people a lot about is also this concept of making small improvements like if someone knows he needs to save a lot of money for retirement you can’t do it all at once but a lot of people could save a thousand or two thousand shekels a month at the beginning in order to get these small successes, is that the idea that you are trying to promote? Aviad Goz: If we look at the first three habits, the first three habits constitute the idea of personal effectiveness and the next reconstitute the idea of interpersonal effectiveness With only looking to the person effectiveness and it can be applied greatly to your question The first one says be proactive, that means take the responsibility The second one says beginning of the end in mind

In other words, define where you want it all to end up or what is your idea of five years from now or 10 years from now, where would you like to end The third one is called put first things first or in other words after you look far and you defined where you want to get to, then you need on the very weekly basis to manage yourself by focusing on the small actions, we call them sometimes 20, 80 activities that will get you there so imagine that every week, that’s habit three, you sit for the weekend and you think about next week, you think about what you try to reach five or 10 years from now and you ask yourself what could be the one or two specific activities that I can do next week that will move me forward on that scale? So far looking and then very short view into next week so I can do maybe two things and so I need to schedule that, put them in the diary, commit to myself that I’m going to do that and a vital one or two small activities a week if you do it for a year, you will be in the area of hundred small actions which create really a fly wing, creates a momentum that goes somewhere and it’s free Douglas Goldstein: I think one of the interesting point about this is they’re not the steps that people take but you are referring to them as the habits that people have which means that once you get in the habit of being proactive or thinking of starting a project with the end in mind or putting first things first, you naturally become that way, you then will become more successful and if you want to be a successful investor or say for retirement or successful in your business, I think that by simply changing your habits the way you are describing, you will in fact be well on the way and it’s not going to be a constant uphill battle, it will just become who you are that you are the person who is very, very effective Aviad Goz: Exactly and if you think about it, the opposite habits are our three-fold habits as an example being reactive is a different habit which also children have but they have to grow and mature from that and the second habit by default people worry of here and now certain you know gratification and satisfaction and not beginning and the end in mind and the third habit you know, put first things first, the opposite habit, the default habit if I do it urgent, I will do what is in my faith now you know, pushing to be done now So actually all of the inhabits are the way people mature or can mature, away from a more childish different approach into taking full responsibility of their life and I agree it is to develop habits so eventually this becomes your default all the time

Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow you and follow your work? Aviad Goz: Momentum group represents in Israel Franklin Covey, we run a lot of Seven Habits courses We can be found in wwwmomentumorgil where all our courses are published

Personally, I wrote and published 11 books and the most famous one is called “Self Navigation” which people can get over the internet or in Amazon that spells out more of the journey of self-navigation tool, it’s very successful